Many family-friendly performances, face painting, hay rides, storytelling, music and many indoor and outdoor events throughout the afternoon and evening, culminating in the kids countdown, 7-7:30 p.m. with a surprise item(s) dropped from, from the roof of the Beverly National Bank, 240 Cabot St.

It is Dec. 23 and much of the world outside Montserrat College’s Studio 301 on Cabot Street scrambles to put finishing touches on the coming Christmas celebration, completing last-minute shopping or heading to visits with family and friends.

Not Margo Jones — at least not yet.

The retired art teacher has another holiday on her mind and a meeting with a slightly different set of family and friends. The fraternity sits in labeled boxes or stands on 6- or 7-foot-tall poles. Inside the boxes rest a sea serpent, a caterpillar, letters, bears, fairy tale characters. Some 150 to 200 costumes in all await their chance to spring to life on their annual New Year’s Eve journey around downtown Beverly.

Jones has spent December working two to six hours a day mending, improving assemblies and otherwise refurbishing her creations, along with assistants Sue Gordon and Shirley Kimball.

Without the trio, one of the most popular and visible elements of the family-friendly Beverly New Year’s Eve celebration wouldn’t happen. The annual Grand Procession would never step off from Studio 301 and fill Beverly’s downtown with all the characters and figures Jones and other volunteers have crafted since the first parade in 1994. Adults, teens and children wouldn’t gather and become the head of a dragon, the leg of a caterpillar, a letter of the alphabet, one of the Three Bears or carry a giant fish head on a pole down Cabot Street as part of the city’s New Year’s celebration.

Jones started with only 12 costumes in that first parade 13 years ago. She’s added to her creations steadily since. And after a couple-year hiatus from introducing new characters, Jones will have at least a dozen new figures for this year’s parade. She calls them “the long necks.” They resemble a cross between giraffes, ostriches and plesiosaurs, the carnivorous, sea-going dinosaurs with long, thin necks and tubby, turtle-like bodies.

Jones also promises some additional creations designed especially to appeal to “young boys,” but she won’t say anything more about them — she doesn’t want to ruin the surprise.

Crafted from cardboard boxes, fabric, paint, bits of wire, cardboard tubes and papier-mâché, the parade costumes stand as a tribute to Jones’ creativity and ingenuity.

What’s most remarkable, the costumes not only use common materials and fit over heads and bodies, so wearers can see where they are going — wearers will see through eye holes in the neck of the long necks, but they also collapse to almost nothing for easy storage.

Beyond papier-mâché heads, which are bulky and fragile, every other costume or part of a costume seems to fold, collapse and stack.

“It’s not just a case of making,” says Jones. “It’s a test of fitting the pieces together. A costume has to be able to be stored.”

Thus, all 200 or so costumes fit into two storage units at Beverly Public Storage, one 9 feet by 12 feet by 7 feet and the other 7 feet by 12 feet by 7 feet.

Letters, for example, fold completely flat, yet they pop into three dimensions in about 30 seconds. The cardboard box opens up, arm holes on two opposite sides, the letter on the other two sides, and a two flaps at the top of the box fold over the wearer’s shoulders, each side with a half circle, that, when joined, create a hole for the wearer’s head. A pin attached to a short string slides through a loop attached to the bottom shoulder flap. The loop then slips through a slit in the top shoulder flap. The pin slides into the loop, keeping the whole box secured on the wearer.

Not all costumes worked so smoothly, so Jones looks for ways to either make assembly or storage easier.

This year, Jones changed the attachment mechanism for the costumes with papier-mâché heads. The old system used a tin can on the end of pole to slide into a specific, hidden hole inside the head. If the can didn’t fit perfectly, the head wobbled. With hundreds of people trying to get into costumes prior to the grand procession, the fussing made for much frustration and damaged costumes.

So, this year, Jones changed the attachments.

This year, the heads have a shaft, narrow at the bottom and wider at the top, where it attaches to the head. The shaft simply slides into a hollow cardboard pole. The shaft continues to slide until the widest part fits snugly into the pole, securing the head. The wearer can see the whole attachment mechanism, making assembly very easy.

Working so many volunteer hours to refurbish costumes and design new ones, especially so close to the holidays, might seem a burden. Not so, says Jones.

“This is my playtime,” she says. “Who else gets to make something out of nothing?”